Nov 07, 2008

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn't necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• A city-subsidized hotel
is causing a stink in Chicago, where Mayor Richard M. Daley wants to
give the project another $12 million -- on top of more than $40 million
the city has already guaranteed. A city spokesman said that without the
money, Loews Corp., which will operate the hotel, will probably back
out of the deal. And who says we get to have all the fun?

• New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to charge shoppers six cents for every plastic bag
they use, in another attempt to reduce plastic bag use. If the proposal
passes, reports the New York Times, the city would become one of the
first places in the United States to assess a plastic bag tax. It's
already popular in Europe, where several countries have the tax. In
Ireland, the fee is 33 cents a bag. The Dallas city council decided
against a plastic bag ban in October, though the Times says we're considering the tax idea.

• If you want to put a sex ad on the usually-free Craigslist,
you're going to have to pay for it. That's the settlement reached by
the Internet classified ad service and 40 states, which said the sex
ads were soliciting illegal services. But what struck me as even more
interesting is that Craigslist has fewer than 30 employees.

•
And this is for all of us who have to turn the computer on 10 minutes
early every morning because the damn thing takes so long to boot up:
Microsoft says it will quicken the boot time
and try to speed up the way the next generation of Windows works. The
company acknowledged that Windows Vista slowed down computers with
features that most of us never used.